>>I have seen dates stored as seconds since a predetermined date. Does that help?
>
>Well, getting its numeric value is not difficult. Date.Now.Ticks would do it. But, how to get it back? That's what I am trying to figure out.

I don't know if it has been answered yet, but the DateTime structure has a constructor where you can pass the number of ticks.

long ticks = DateTime.Now.Ticks;
DateTime aLittleWhileAgo = new DateTime(ticks);